Tag archives for BioBlitz
Posted by The 2012 BioBlitz is coming! The event will be held on August 24 and 25 in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. Teams of volunteers will help scientists identify as many different species of plants, animals, and other organisms as they can during the 24-hour event. If you’re interested in signing up with a parent, click the link below to get more information.
Learn more about the 2012 BioBlitz.
Watch a video of bighorn sheep on National Geographic Kids.
Photograph by Richard Hahn, My Shot
It would be easier to find animals after dark if they glowed, wouldn’t it? Actually, scorpions found in Saguaro National Park do (at least with special equipment). During last weekend’s BioBlitz in the park, researchers used black lights to count scorpions. Black lights give off ultraviolet light, which reacts with a nitrogenous substance in the scorpion’s cuticles, giving it a green glow. “You go out at night into the Sonoran Desert with one of these UV lights and … these scorpions light up and glow like a little star field on the ground,” says Paul Marek, an entomologist at the University of Arizona.
The 2011 BioBlitz in Saguaro National Park in Arizona was a 24-hour effort to count different species within the park. The count added more than 400 species to the park’s species lists.
Learn more about glowing scorpion on the National Geographic News Watch blog.
Learn more about 2011 BioBlitz on the National Geographic News Watch blog.
Get the facts on scorpions in the Creature Feature.
Photo courtesy of Paul Marek
This year’s BioBlitz species study in Biscayne National Park near Miami, Florida begins today. The 24-hour event teams together volunteer scientists, families, students, teachers, and other community members to find and identify as many species of plants, animals, microbes, fungi, and other organisms as possible.
A BioBlitz gives kids and adults the opportunity to join biologists in the field and participate in a real-life research expedition. It’s a fun and exciting way to learn about the biological diversity of local parks and to better understand how to protect them.
National Geographic is helping conduct a BioBlitz in a different national park each year during the decade leading up to the U.S. National Park Service Centennial in 2016. Volunteers at the 2009 Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore BioBlitz turned up more than 1,200 species compared with more than 1,700 in the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area in 2008, and more than 650 in Washington, D.C.’s Rock Creek Park in 2007.
Would you consider participating in a BioBlitz?
Learn more about a BioBlitz.
Get BioBlitz updates on National Geographic’s Blog WILD.
Photograph by Susan Poulton
